


real sweet to grow old

by mercurious



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Recovery, Switching, Trans Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 19:18:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15564663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurious/pseuds/mercurious
Summary: They find a little happiness, goddamn it.





	real sweet to grow old

**Author's Note:**

> Ive Wanted This For Years Fuck. What The Fuck. 
> 
> This was supposed to just be porn but it got away from me a bit. Steve is trans but the fic isn’t really about that. I’m just extremely wedded to that headcanon.

Bucky has a daily routine now. Pumping water is the first item. The pump turns on a crank, like pumps traditionally do, but brings water up from the ground already clean and cool and clear, like magic. The heat sometimes gets bad by late morning and he doesn’t want the animals getting dehydrated. This works out for everybody, because preemptive guilt is consistently effective at getting Bucky out of bed. It’s always better, once he’s up and in the daylight.

All but one of the animals are goats, but the calf Shuri personally gifted to him is his favorite. Iminqatha came to him already named. He’s not sure how big she’ll end up, but for now she’s no bigger than a large dog. Her eyelashes are so long it’s comical. They make her look like a cartoon of a girl cow. Bucky lets her on the furniture.

Sometimes Bucky sits in front of the small, circular mirror hanging on his wall for long stretches. His reflection looks more like a real person to him than it did in Bucharest. Increasingly, the first thought to surface is that he looks like his dad. Bucky feels sure his dad wouldn’t have been caught dead with hair to his shoulders, but Bucky recoils from the very idea of getting it cut. The idea of looking like _that_ version of Bucky Barnes strikes him as fundamentally wrong. Grotesque, even. Something like disrespect to the dead.

The reason he looks like his dad, he realized recently, is that he’s aging again. That thought knocked the breath out of him. That’s what people do. They age. They make decisions about how to wear their hair. They change. Finally. Finally. Finally.  

He’s had a children’s novel on his mind: a book his one of his little sisters once loved so much she wore out the spine. It was about a family who traveled out into the middle of a prairie, far away from any cities, and built a house from the ground up — just about stuck together with bubblegum and shoestring, if Bucky is remembering this correctly — and grew crops there until a swarm of locusts came and destroyed everything for miles. Although, Bucky _knows_ locusts were one of the ten plagues. Does he have that mixed up? Is his mind transplanting miscellaneous misfortunes into the wrong stories? He can’t remember ever seeing a locust in the states, but what Bucky can and can’t remember does not count for a lot. Maybe the family lived in their makeshift house and grew their crops for a long time, happy and healthy, and were never beset by anything.

He’ll look it up on Google later.

Steve is sitting cross-legged on the floor of his house, scratching the top of Iminqatha’s head like a dog’s. He’s grown out a couple weeks worth of stubble since Bucky last saw him, and it suits him. Iminqatha lowers her head to snuff at the pockets of Steve’s pants, and Steve eyes crinkle up when he laughs. He doesn’t know she’s checking for hay, having figured out that Bucky keeps snacks for her in his pockets.

And, by God, Bucky is just about happy.

Except that then Steve wants to _talk_.

—

For awhile looking at even a picture of Steve was like a slap to the face, every single time. The memories would come back in incomprehensible torrents. Too much, too fast, too heavy.

Bucky remembers Steve showing up after Azzano, different. He remembers his guilt as a physical sensation, heavy and hot and blistering, lodging in the head like a bullet. _Some friend you are_ , he remembers thinking. He had known Steve was like that, wanted that. He’d been ignoring it, trying to mind his own business, simply because he didn’t know what the hell else to do.

He doesn’t remember what Steve looked like _before_. Was his hair ever long? Had he worn dresses? Was he pretty? Stupid question. Bucky thinks he’s pretty now.

It’s gotten easy to remember him during the war. There are a thousand images filed under those words in his head. Steve Rogers; Captain America. Lots of pictures, lots of sounds, lots of feelings. That’s because he can look at Steve, _now_. He’s gotten a handle on that. Seeing him can be an anchor. Like tying a rope to something strong and well-rooted at ground-level, something with weight, before lowering yourself into a dark hole in the ground.

On Bucky’s way out of the country, he passed through Brooklyn. He wound his way through a few residential areas and _knew_ , as a fact, that it wasn’t the same as when he was a kid. He knew it without being able to access any of the details that should inform that kind of certainty. Nothing about the Brooklyn he grew up in. Nothing about how it looked, sounded, smelled, or felt. He has some of those memories back now. But the visual image of Steve-as-a-kid is like that. It’s a gap.

Fucked up not to remember what your childhood best friend looked like. Circumstances notwithstanding.

Bucky does remember this: that those first months with the Howling Commandos, for the second time in his life, he thought about sex with Steve _constantly_. The desire had seemed to grow directly out from the center of the guilt. Bucky imagines a warped, twitchy insect emerging dripping, ravenous from a rotten cocoon. That’s about how he remembers the feeling, although it’s possible he’s twisting things again. Remembering them slanted, sideways, nastier than they were.

The night before they left England he skipped out on the last minute strategizing around two in the morning and sulked in the bar until he found trouble. Trouble ended up being broad-shouldered, bright-eyed, and baby-faced. He introduced himself as Private Ernest Powell, and Bucky remembered thinking as they shook hands that there was no way he’d seen a day of combat in his life. When Bucky dragged him off to the men’s room, he’d called it “the loo.”

“Fuck, that’s a big dick,” Bucky said. “Think it’ll even fit?”

Private Ernest Powell started looking honestly concerned. Alarmed, Bucky took him by one lapel and pull him into an abrupt kiss before he could say anything. “One way to find out,” Bucky mumbled into his mouth, trying and _mostly_ succeeding at getting his own belt unbuckled with one hand.

Good grief. Of course _that’s_ the memory that comes back to him with complete clarity.

The first time, here in Wakanda, it took about sixty seconds after agreeing on sex — tripping over their words like teenagers, breathless, desperate — for Steve to get Bucky’s dick halfway down his throat. _Not_ what Bucky would have predicted. Not an unpleasant surprise either. It could have been a passing impulse, but the thought came to Bucky later that maybe Steve had been thinking about it. That he knew exactly what he wanted to do to Bucky first, and had for a long time. That idea sent a hot shiver of pleasure up Bucky’s back, and stuck pleasantly in his head for days after. One more thing he doesn’t deserve, but has regardless.

—

Steve wants to talk, and Iminqatha, traitorously, chooses this moment to get up and amble out of the room.

“It’s just,” Steve is saying. “We haven’t talked about any of what’s happened, and Sam...” Steve visibly thinks better of relating whatever Sam thinks. A good call.

Bucky makes the impulse decision, as Steve is getting started on his next sentence, to scoot over and climb into his lap.

Steve blinks, trailing off, as Bucky goes for the buckles on his suit. They are way, way more trouble than they need to be. Bucky can’t remember ever having been issued a uniform this complicated to get in or out of, one-handed or otherwise.

“Um. What are you doing?” Steve says, sounding half-amused. He doesn’t stop Bucky, but he doesn’t help him out any either. This getup doubles as a goddamn chastity device.

“I’m making a pass at you. What does it look like.”

“I can see that.” Steve is cute when he’s disapproving.

“What?” Bucky leans in as if to kiss him, then lets their noses brush instead. “You don’t wanna?” He smiles, quirks his eyebrows. It feels like the ghost of a dumb, cocksure American kid possessing him, or like an impersonation so well-studied he even fools himself. It feels good. He sees Steve hesitate, his eyes flickering over Bucky’s face.

“Bucky...” He makes that prissy, troubled face Bucky has always been endeared by.

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky says, still smiling. He finds that making fun of Steve comes very naturally, at the moment. Steve smiles back in spite of himself, and Bucky takes that as his cue to lean in and kiss him.

_This is good_ , he thinks at Steve, getting a grip on his jaw as he kisses him harder, as he lets his tongue just graze Steve’s front teeth. _God, don’t you see? This is still good._

Steve takes a deep breath before he splays both hands on the small of Bucky’s back and pulls Bucky against him, kisses him back. Bucky goes pliant in Steve’s arms, happy to let himself be (gently) manhandled. He still isn’t used to the idea; Steve _wanting_ him. Wanting him bad enough to be distracted from digging his heels in on something, even. It doesn’t get much more flattering than that.

Steve shuts his eyes tight when Bucky pushes inside him. With each thrust his brows draw into a small, tense furrow before relaxing again. Wince, inhale, sigh. Bucky can’t take his eyes off it. Can’t stop thinking, _I’m doing that_ , like he’s sixteen and still boggling over the basic mechanics. _I’m doing that to him._

—

Unfortunately, Bucky can’t distract Steve that way indefinitely. Serum notwithstanding.

“Look.” Steve rolls over on his side and props his head up on one elbow. He’s still flushed slightly pink, but he’s got his stern, no-nonsense face on. “I know it’s hard, but we really should talk.”

Bucky doesn’t know what Steve is expecting to happen here. He gives him a look that says as much.

“I just want you to know you can tell me,” Steve says. “Tell me anything. I only care that you’re okay.”

That makes it start to come clear, what’s going on in Steve’s head. He thinks that talking will fix it. That Bucky will tell him one of the grisly, horrific, factual events of his life, and saying the words out loud will somehow draw the reality of it out of him, like sucking poison out of a snakebite. That the thing will rewind, reverse, un-happen. And then Bucky will be _okay_.

Bucky is nuts about Steve, but Steve has no fucking clue what he’s talking about.

“Alright,” Bucky finds himself saying. “If we’ve gotta talk, I have a question for you.”

Steve looks only slightly taken aback. “Okay.”

“Why’d you stop fighting. On the helicarrier.”

Steve looks surprised for a moment. Then he nods, as if to say, _fair enough._

“At the time, I thought it was the right thing to do,” he says. “But the truth is, I was tired. I was in a bad place. Thought I wanted to be done. You know.”

“No, I don’t.” Bucky doesn’t know why he sounds so pissed off. Is he pissed off? Does he get to be pissed off about the fact that he hit Steve hard enough to crack any normal person’s skull open?

Steve’s eyebrows go up. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“What about wanting to go back in the ice?”

What about it? That was a way to keep other people safe without dying. Not dying was an operative priority in the decision. Bucky feels a wave of profound exhaustion come over him. This all seems like it would take way too much energy to say aloud, so he doesn’t.

There’s a period of silence. Steve doesn’t look like he’s waiting for a response. He seems to be genuinely thinking over this new information.

“When we.... With Tony. The whole time, I was terrified of you giving up. Deciding it wasn’t worth it.”

“That would never have happened.” Bucky’s voice is flat. A fact-stating voice.

Steve is looking at him with little creases in his forehead. Like he just doesn’t get it. Bucky’s not sure he does either. Not in a way that would let him isolate reasons, and put those reasons into words, and maybe those words into sentences in a neat, numbered list. A letter in tidy, inked calligraphy laying out each step of the logic that led him to: _I want to be alive. Still._

Bucky doesn’t have that, so he stays quiet.

“Hey,” Steve says. He scoots closer and takes Bucky’s hand. “That’s _good_. It’s really good.” Bucky can’t quite look at him.

“Have we _talked_ , yet?” he wants to know. Steve snorts and gives his hand a squeeze.

“For now,” he says. He probably doesn’t mean for it to sound ominous.

—

“I wish you could fuck me,” Bucky says, tracing the hair on Steve’s lower belly with his fingers. It’s the last morning before Steve has to hike back to the capital and get in his tin can shuttle back to _Sam_ , and maybe Bucky feels sorry for himself. Maybe he wants to give Steve something to think about on his ride out of here.

Maybe that’s a mean thing to say. But Bucky is powerfully curious if Steve’s thought about the same thing. It would be something just to know he’s fantasized about it.

“You want me to?” Steve only sounds mildly surprised. “I can.”

Oh. Well.

It doesn’t take rocket science, Bucky supposes.

“It’ll be a little uncomfortable if they scan my shuttle when I land, but...”

Bucky surprises himself by laughing. He doesn’t do that much anymore. It’s one thing to think to yourself, “this is funny.” To be aware of the potential humor and to know you could make a joke about whatever it is, if you could get the right words into your mouth in the right order before the moment passed. There’s a chasm of difference between that and feeling amusement, actually enjoying the thought of something.

Bucky genuinely _enjoys_ the idea of Wakandan Security knowing Captain America brought a contraband sex toy into their country.

When Steve says, “Is that a yes?” Bucky ignores him in favor of the laughter, which keeps on happening, and is frankly more interesting. When Steve rolls on top of him and shuts Bucky up by kissing him, though, he finds he doesn’t mind.

—

Bucky’s grateful Steve doesn’t ask if he’s done this before. He doesn’t want to say he has no way of knowing for sure. Doesn’t want to watch Steve think that one over and frown, get _concerned_. Concerned is not a turn on. Remembering you’ve got a brain full of holes is not a turn on, either.

Having two of Steve’s fingers wet and slippery in his ass, on the other hand, is kind of doing it for him. It only hurts bad enough to register; a slight burn, like the soreness of an overused muscle.

“In all fairness,” Bucky says, “you should let me return the favor.”

“Okay,” Steve says. Bucky has to take a second to regroup. To adjust to this version of Steve who agrees to get fucked in the ass like it’s no big deal, like he does it every day. He might, for all Bucky knows. God.

He’s jealous, he notes. Of Sam. It’s an interesting emotion, sexual jealousy. Very small and specific. Petty, that’s the word. Strangely intense considering how little is really at stake.

When Steve guides the toy into him, Bucky’s initial physical impulse is to freeze. He has to deliberately decide that it’s okay to make the noise that’s caught somewhere in his chest. That he’s going to let himself. It comes out somewhere between a sigh and a moan. Encouragingly, It sounds like someone who really, really likes what’s happening to them. It’s one thing to feel good, to be turned on. Successfully _expressing_ that, like a normal person? Another thing entirely. Making it to the big leagues.

He feels Steve’s hands on his face, running thumbs over his cheekbones.

“You okay?” Steve says. Bucky feels another one of those bright, startling sparks of real amusement. Fun amusement. He sounds so _worried_. “Does it hurt?”

“Does that sounds like an ‘it hurts’ noise,” Bucky says, which may count as bragging. He sounds breathless, which is also hot. Makes him feel like a movie starlet who’s had the daylights kissed out of her. Like someone’s going to have their wicked way with him after the fade to black. Or, is having, as the case may be. “Come on,” he says. "Go."

Steve starts out rocking his hips against Bucky’s ass gently, slowly. This could be either fussy carefulness or deliberate teasing, and knowing Steve it’s probably a little of each. Bucky could take more, but he’s okay with letting Steve work up to it. This doesn’t feel _bad_ by any stretch. Better than a poke in the eye. So to speak.

Oh, right. Bucky remembers now. Powell, Ernest. London, England. Big dick. Wonderful.

Steve leans in and bends Bucky’s legs back under his arms, as if he’s going to gather Bucky up in them from this ungainly angle, limbs and all. It’s only then, with Bucky sheltered under the arc of his shoulders, that Steve deems it acceptable to stop dicking around and put his back into it.

It occurs to Bucky that as he is — down a limb and out of practice — Steve would have no trouble overpowering him, holding him down. The center of his chest goes liquid and fizzy, like soda pop. Steve is making a mess of Bucky’s breathing; it’s all sudden gasps and sharp, guttural exhales beyond his control, but in a different context, Bucky can imagine sighing over this idea, dreamy. He doesn’t feel the need to say anything to Steve. He can just have the thought to keep. Can privately enjoy the singular novelty of feeling simultaneously helpless and very, very, very safe.

“I’m sore,” Bucky observes, after. Sticky, too.

Steve turns over on his side to look at him, and for a second Bucky thinks he’s going to fuss. Instead, he says, “Of course you are.”

Smug, Bucky thinks, as he’s getting kissed. That’s something, alright.

Maybe it’s not _such_ a bad thing, that he’s with Sam.

—

The last morning of Steve’s visit, Bucky decides that against every instinct he’s got, they really do have to talk.

“Hey, Steve?” he says.

Oh, hell. This is going to be ugly, he can already tell. This is going to be a word jumble. It’s going to be full-on, authentic nutjob gibberish.

“If you want to talk to me about your stuff, that’s fine. But I’m just still here. I’m still here, so I have to keep going. That’s all I can do. That’s all I can think about.” Bucky tries to rewind that in his head to hear if it made sense. Could be worse, he decides.

“That’s why I don’t want to talk.” He considers, then adds a small concession. “For now.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and Bucky has to take a second. Steve sounds surprised, but in a good way. The word “impressed” nearly fits, but Bucky didn’t do anything impressive, so maybe he’s got it wrong. Bucky glances at Steve, defensiveness still clinging to him, careful. His heart feels like it’s beating too fast.

“Really?” he asks.

“Of course.”

Steve gives him a careful, “asking permission” look before he takes his face in his hands and kisses him, and the emotion Bucky feels in response is both intense and incomprehensible. He sets it aside in favor of watching Steve do a thorough, concentrated sweep of the cabin for any forgotten belongings. Steve kisses him goodbye — one long and lingering, on the lips, and then two more quick against the side of his face, as though he can’t bear to pull away just yet — and walks until he crests a hill and disappears behind it. And Bucky doesn’t feel _that_ bad.

He finds Iminqatha in back of the house, munching hay. He sits down in the dirt next to her and runs his hand over her course brown fur. He thinks he might take a walk in the woods, once he’s eaten something. Enjoy the shade, go in the direction of the mountains.

When the feeling returns it’s stronger, more pronounced, and Bucky manages to snap his hands closed around it, like he’s a kid and it’s a bug he wants a closer look at. Wants to put a pin in and a label under. On inspection, he decides it’s not “being okay,” not now or tomorrow or this year or the next. Instead, it’s the mere possibility — colorful and stinging and attracting light — that someday, just maybe, he’s gonna be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> * I really don’t intend this as sadstuck. It is impossible to overstate how certain I am that Bucky Barnes is gonna survive the two-part Infinity War event. Like, he's fine. He'll be fine.   
> * "Iminqatha" means "carrots" in isiXhosa lol. I originally had it as a Xhosa name but I came back and changed it bc the vibe just felt weird to me even if giving people names to pets is normal all other factors aside. Do not regret my very self indulgent OC.   
> * At the beginning of the fic Bucky is thinking of Little House on the Prairie & On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I found out those books are libertarian propaganda as a result of writing this! Bummer!
> 
> *tearfully* I'm so glad they finally banged


End file.
